by Penny Jordan
‘Let me take this off, Georgia,’ he begged her. ‘Let me see you...all of you...’
Just for a moment Georgia hesitated. She was by nature very modest—too much so, she sometimes thought—but as though he guessed what she was thinking Piers whispered to her gently, ‘You want to see me too, don’t you? You want to touch me...hold me...’
Her breath catching in her throat, Georgia gave a soft, panting gasp of assent. What he was suggesting, offering, was too alluring, too tempting for her to refuse, her eyes already glistening with emotion at the thought of the sensual riches he was promising her.
‘Let me take this off, then,’ he told her, carefully sliding the straps of her nightdress free of her shoulders. Even that light touch of his fingertips against her naked skin was enough to bring her out in a mass of sensually aroused goosebumps, and Georgia knew before her nightdress slid free of her naked body, to reveal them in all their darkly pink, feminine glory, that her nipples were as eagerly aroused as two rosebuds, just waiting for the hot, silky warmth of the morning sun to coax them into full flower.
Only what her nipples yearned for was not the touch of the summer sun, but the stroke of Piers’s fingers; the moist heat of his mouth. The intimacy of her own thoughts was enough to make her shudder visibly.
He had never seen a woman betray her arousal, her need, so innocently nor so proudly, Piers acknowledged, and he had certainly never felt so awed, so humbled, so blessed in knowing he was the reason for that arousal.
She might not love him but Georgia wanted him, and somehow he knew instinctively that this level of desire was as unfamiliar to her as loving her so intensely was unfamiliar to him.
Very carefully he reached out and cupped her naked breasts, looking first into her eyes and then down to the silken globes he was cherishing with his hands and his gaze, before telling her thickly, ‘You are so beautiful...so perfect...’
‘No...’ Georgia began to deny, but before she could finish he was kissing her, gently at first, and then with increasing passion as he slid his hands around her back, bringing her naked breasts into direct contact with the warm, silky abrasion of his chest. Georgia thought the sensation of his body pressed so close to hers, his heart pumping so strongly that it could have been beating for both of them, was going to make her faint.
‘No one else has ever done this with you before, have they?’ Piers asked her insistently, his emotions overruling his natural caution as the instinctive knowledge that she was giving herself to him with an intimacy she had never shared with anyone else hit him like a jolt of adrenaline released into his bloodstream.
As he spoke Piers’s hand was returning to cover her naked breast with an open possessiveness that made Georgia’s heart turn over inside her chest. Just for a moment, with that look in his eyes, she could almost convince herself that he loved her.
‘If just my caressing your breast makes you feel like this,’ Piers breathed hotly as he felt the mute shudders of delight run through her body, betraying everything that she was feeling to him, ‘just think how it’s going to feel when we do something more intimate.’
Something more intimate! Georgia’s eyes started to widen with a mixture of excitement and alarm. She was already quivering so intensely with the extent of the arousal and longing coursing through her that she didn’t think she could actually bear to endure any more pleasure. But Piers was already bending his head, whispering such things against her mouth and into her ears that her whole body burned to hear them—and burned even hotter to know them.
And then, somewhere in the town, a dog barked.
Immediately Georgia froze. Ben... Ben was stolen, lost, in danger, and here she was lying in Piers’s arms, indulging herself selfishly, not even thinking about him.
‘No,’ she told Piers sharply, pushing him away, her eyes widening with distress at her own selfishness.
‘No?’ Piers tensed. Another few seconds and he would have been unable to stop himself from telling her how much he loved her, unable to stop himself from showing her how much he loved her. He ought to be grateful that she had stopped him and brought him to his senses. He was glad. There was no point in him making the situation between them even worse by declaring a love for her that she quite plainly did not want.
‘I’m sorry,’ he apologised distantly, averting his eyes as she scrabbled to retrieve her nightdress. ‘That was...’
‘It’s all right,’ Georgia told him breathlessly, praying inwardly that she could stop him before he explained to her that he had momentarily been overwhelmed by his male sexual drive; that his reaction to her had simply been that of a normal healthy male to the presence of a semi-naked woman. ‘I understand. We’re both upset about Ben... I know you just intended to comfort me... I...’
As he viewed her downbent head Piers’s mouth twisted wryly.
‘It wasn’t exactly comfort that was uppermost in my mind just now when I—’ he began.
But Georgia interrupted him in a choked voice, begging him, ‘Please don’t say any more. I’m not... I don’t...’
She didn’t love him; that was what she was finding so hard to say, Piers guessed.
‘I guess you’re right,’ he agreed heavily. ‘We’re both acting somewhat out of character.’
Well, that was true enough in his case. He had certainly never come anywhere near telling any other woman that he loved her, but then he had never loved any other woman, had never felt about anyone else the way he felt about Georgia. His feelings for her were out of character...or, at least, outside his experience.
Outside, dawn proper was now peaching the sky. If Ben had survived the night, once the police had been able to interview the youths who had taken his car, perhaps they might be able to narrow down an area where they could begin searching for him. If he had survived the night. If he hadn’t... If he hadn’t, Georgia would never forgive him, and neither would he ever forgive himself.
CHAPTER EIGHT
KEEPING his body low to the ground, Ben followed the sound of the bleating sheep. He could see them now—white dots breaking up the darkness of the night-cloaked hills. They were high-country sheep, still with not yet fully grown lambs, and with his sharp senses Ben could see and smell the vixen shadowing an isolated group of three ewes, all with lambs, on the outskirts of the flock, her cubs at her heels.
As he watched the vixen carefully marking out her prey Ben growled deep in his throat. He wasn’t a country dog, but both Mrs Latham and Georgia had strong views about such things, and Ben, who loved a good brisk run after a rabbit, knew much better than to try and catch one.
Ben did his best to growl a warning to the ewe, but he was too far away to prevent the inevitable. Even so... Cautiously he made his way towards the flock, but when he got there it was too late. Where there had been triplets now there were only two small lambs, both of them being hurried anxiously away by the ewe. Cautiously Ben dipped his head fastidiously, sniffing the scent of fresh blood.
The farmer, alerted to the intrusion by the sound of the farm dogs barking, was already halfway up the hill, gun at the ready, when he saw Ben. Immediately he took aim...
* * *
‘Lost another lamb last night,’ Harry Bowles complained to his brother-in-law grumpily as his wife poured both her husband and her brother a cup of strong Yorkshire tea. Her brother was in the police force and often called round to have breakfast with them at the end of his shift if he was working in the area.
‘Fox?’ Brian Jessop asked him sympathetically as he took his tea from his sister.
Harry Bowles shook his head.
‘No,’ he told him shortly. ‘Dog. Saw him as plain as day. Incomer’s dog, by the looks of him. Some fancy breed that—’
‘What exactly did he look like?’ Brian Jessop asked him sharply, putting down his tea.
Briefly Harry described Ben.
‘You didn’t shoot him, did you?’ Brian asked him. ‘Only it sounds to me like he’s this dog that’s been reported as being st
olen, and there’s a reward being offered for his safe return.’
‘Tried, but I missed him, Brian,’ Harry told him grimly.
‘Come on; let’s go and see if he’s still around,’ Brian Jessop suggested. ‘If he’s still about perhaps we can coax him down to the farm and get a proper look at him.’
* * *
Ben saw the two men from the small safe place he had found for himself in the shelter of an outcrop of rock overgrown with ferns and other vegetation. Warily he watched them. He recognised the farmer and stiffened anxiously. They were calling his name but he didn’t know them, and in the last twenty-four hours Ben had learned that not all human beings were like his owners.
Cautiously he watched the two men, only relaxing when, nearly half an hour later, they turned their backs on him and started to walk back in the direction they had come.
‘I’ll put a report in, then, just in case the dog you saw was this missing English setter,’ Brian told his brother-in-law. ‘And remember if you see him again to try and coax him down here to the farm...’
‘If I see him worrying my sheep again it won’t be coaxing him anywhere that I’ll be wanting to do,’ Harry told him grimly. It was bad enough being a farmer without having city folks’ dogs worrying his sheep.
* * *
It was much later on in the day when Ben, driven by tiredness and hunger, finally succumbed to the temptation the farm represented. From his vantage point on the hillside he could see down into the farmyard, where Mary Bowles was feeding her husband’s working dog accompanied by the elderly ‘no breed’ dog, Jack, who was her own pet.
Ben’s mouth watered as he watched them eating their food. He was hungry. Very hungry.
Stealthily he started to make his way down the hill.
The collie sensed his presence first, setting up a sharp volley of barks which Jack quickly joined in. Mary Bowles heard them from the kitchen and hurried out into the yard. Harry was in town on business, and she wasn’t expecting any visitors, but the sight of the one she saw sliding round the corner of the field wall made her gasp and call softly, ‘Ben... Ben... Here, good dog...’
A woman’s voice... Ben liked women. Eagerly he hurried into the yard, allowing Mary to fuss him and gratefully accepting the food she brought him, but when she tried to grab his collar Ben sensed danger and immediately darted out of her reach, heading swiftly back up the hill.
* * *
‘Are you sure it was him?’ Brian Jessop questioned his sister when she rang him.
‘It was definitely the dog you described to us this morning,’ Mary Bowles confirmed.
‘Right. I’ll tell them at the station, then. Pity you couldn’t catch him.’
* * *
It was Piers who took the call from the police whilst Georgia was outside in the garden hanging up the cover from Ben’s bed, which she had washed more to give herself something to do than anything else.
‘That was the police,’ Piers told her as she came back into the kitchen just as he was replacing the receiver. ‘They’ve had a report of a sighting of Ben...’
‘Where?’ Georgia demanded immediately.
‘In the Yorkshire Dales. A farmer’s wife saw him in the farmyard and fed him, apparently, and—’
‘He’s safe...’ Georgia breathed in relief, tears filling her eyes. ‘Oh, thank God.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up too high,’ Piers told her gently. ‘Ben—if it was Ben—ran off as soon as she’d fed him. It seems that the farmer had taken a shot at Ben earlier in the day. It’s sheep country up there, and—’
‘Where is this farm?’ Georgia asked him urgently. ‘I want to go up there. If Ben is there—’
‘If he is there...’ Piers agreed, and then stopped. He could tell from Georgia’s expression that she intended to go and hunt for Ben and that there was nothing he could do to stop her.
‘Look, I’ve got the farm’s telephone number. Let me give them a ring to ask them if they’d mind if we drove up and looked for Ben.’
Briefly Georgia hesitated. Her immediate instinct was to jump in her car and drive north just as fast as she could, but what Piers was suggesting made sense.
‘Very well,’ she agreed reluctantly.
It seemed to her that, by some unspoken mutual pact, both of them had decided to put their own feelings and the intense complex issues which made up their personal relationship to one side, to concentrate on Ben’s plight. The intimate events of the night had not been referred to by either of them during the long hours of the day whilst they’d waited for news of Ben, and now, even though she was not going to allow herself to admit it, secretly Georgia knew that she was glad to have Piers with her to share the anxiety and the wait. Not that she would ever admit as much to him, nor was she going to admit how relieved she was to have a respite from the hostility between them.
Piers’s manner towards her now was one of almost gentle concern, one of almost protective care, one of almost loving maleness.
Now, that she knew she had to be imagining, because Piers most certainly did not love her. But she loved him.
As she waited for Piers to ring the Bowleses Georgia tried not to let her emotions swamp her. She was still, she suspected, a little bit in shock. To have gone so swiftly from believing that Piers had deliberately abandoned Ben to finding out the truth had left her feeling not just wrong-footed and guilty, but emotionally far too vulnerable and susceptible. Last night in Piers’s arms...
But she must not think about that, or about any of the other things...pleasures...hopes...she had felt in the dark intimacy of the night. No. What she must think about right now was Ben and his safety.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she heard Piers saying warmly into the telephone receiver. ‘Yes, we’ll be leaving almost straight away, so it shouldn’t be too long before we’re with you.
‘That was Mary Bowles,’ he told Georgia when he had concluded his call. ‘She was the one who saw Ben and fed him. She’s convinced that it is Ben. She says that we’re more than welcome to drive up there and stay with them whilst we look for him.’
‘Oh, Piers.’ Sharply painful tears filled Georgia’s eyes and instinctively she started to move closer to him.
Just as instinctively Piers recognised her need, closing the gap between them and opening his arms to her, holding her tightly and rocking her gently against his body as he comforted her, gruffly telling her, ‘At least we know he’s alive...’
‘For now,’ Georgia agreed with a small shiver. ‘If another farmer—’
‘Don’t worry,’ Piers reassured her. ‘The police are arranging to put out a bulletin on the local radio network about Ben.’
As Georgia moved in his arms, lifting her face up to his so that she could listen to him, the temptation to cup it in his hands and kiss the tremble from her mouth was so strong that he had to avert his head and look away from her to stop himself from giving in to it. Ben’s plight had united them, locking them together in an enclosed and intimate circle of mutual concern for the dog, but he must not deceive himself. Once the situation had been resolved Georgia would, no doubt, return to her uncompromising stand of antipathy towards him. Just because last night she had seemed to welcome him, to want him...
‘How soon can we leave? How long will it take us to get there?’ he heard her asking him anxiously.
‘Well, it could be a three- or four-hour drive, depending on road conditions. We’ll have to take my godmother’s car and—’
‘We could take mine,’ Georgia offered.
Piers shook his head, reminding her truthfully, ‘My godmother’s Volvo has more room for Ben.’
‘If we find him...’ Georgia couldn’t prevent herself from pointing out.
‘If we find him,’ Piers agreed. ‘By the way,’ he added, ‘it might be as well to pack an overnight bag. We shan’t get to the farm until early evening, and even with the benefit of the light summer nights we could—’
‘If Ben is up there I’m not com
ing back without him,’ Georgia told Piers determinedly. ‘No matter how long I have to stay. Oh, Piers, what on earth will we tell your godmother?’ she asked him unhappily.
‘Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it,’ Piers told her quietly. ‘Whilst you’re getting ready I’ll go and fill the Volvo with petrol.’
As he started to release her Georgia turned away from him, but then, as all her doubts and fears swept over her, she turned back.
‘Piers...’
The husky, anxious note of her voice made Piers jerk his head round to look at her. Her mouth was within easy kissing distance of his own. Recklessly he ignored the stern voice admonishing him not to give in to his longing, sliding his hand along her jaw and then bending his head to take her mouth in a swift, hard kiss.
As he felt her lips tremble and then part beneath his, momentarily Piers forgot Ben and everything else that lay between them, keeping them apart. Very gently his tonguetip probed Georgia’s soft lips even further apart, the tremble that ran through her body echoed by the deep shudder of arousal racking his own.
Dizzily Georgia clung to Piers as his tongue explored the deep sweetness of her mouth, taking possession of it with a determined sensuality that both shocked and thrilled her.
She loved him so much. If only there weren’t all these barriers between them. If only his desire for her was motivated by love and not merely male physical hunger.
Pain tore through her, causing her to give a small, anguished sob. Immediately Piers released her, and, his voice gruff and deep, his glance fixed somewhere in the distance, told her almost curtly, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t—’
‘I’ll go and pack my bag,’ Georgia interrupted him.
Highly emotive situations often resulted in people behaving in a way that was out of character. Piers felt guilty about Ben and that was why he was behaving as he was towards her, she told herself sternly as she made her way upstairs.
* * *
Mrs Latham’s sturdy Volvo might be nowhere as luxurious as Piers’s Jaguar, with its leather upholstery and elegant interior, but it was way superior to her own runabout, Georgia acknowledged.
